So a few weeks back I’m on a long walk, my iPhone earbuds streaming into my head a rambling but fascinating Matthew McConaughey radio interview.

My mind wanders on these walks. On this particular morning I worry if I remembered to e-mail that one guy at work about that one thing. I ponder why my cat digs the dirt out of potted spider plants. I revisit how I totally missed the boat on Greek yogurt.

You can’t do that when Matthew McConaughey is speaking. You miss just a few seconds and inevitably the man with the musical east Texas drawl has dragged you down a dark, endless rabbit hole and he’s saying things like:

“It feels like they could put a blindfold on you and put you on a spaceship and take you to Neptune and you could hop off on the planet and they better have the sprock control and you get off that spaceship because you are going to behave as your man. That is a glorious feeling!”

Not that McConaugheyean stream-of-consciousness is any easier to decode when you’re paying attention. It’s all part of the enigma that is Matthew McConaughey, a mystery deepened by his sudden respectability.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just awarded the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role to none other than McBongo.

And the thing is, he earned it.

Matthew McConaughey? Really?

Was McConaughey, all along, secretly – even as he raced across the desert as adventurer Dirk Pitt in the movie Sahara – among our most gifted actors?

Is this the same shirtless, oiled-up rogue famous for chasing women as Lance Armstrong’s wingman? The naked, vacant bongo player without a stitch of clothes, grinning in his police booking mugshot?

Is this really the “Just Keep Livin’” guy who seemed destined to become a 21st century George Hamilton, spending his golden years perfecting his tan, hawking skin cream and cigar lounges?

Did a scheming but classically trained actor, transformed by a mad but brilliant plastic surgeon, do away with McConaughey and take his place?

Weeks before the Oscars I’m contemplating this conundrum. So I reach out to the Twitterverse and pose the question – to no one in particular and everyone in general:

WHAT’S UP WITH MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY?

I get nothing. Maybe it’s my lack of a clever hashtag. #IalwaysForgetTheHashtag.

So I put the same question to my small but knowledgable collection of Facebook Friends. They are forever broadening my understanding of the world with obscure cat videos, Instagram selfies and real-time mobile image uploads of burritos they’re about to eat.

My post prompts a few interesting responses:

“When he lost all of that weight for Dallas Buyer’s Club, he lost the crazy part of his brain.”

“I’ve been tossing this around all day and this is what I’ve come up with – he’s doing all this stuff to annoy you.”

“Just keep livin, Mark”

Perhaps least helpful is a comment from a friend we’ll call “Cathy,” (because her name is Cathy): “Is THAT how you spell McConaughey?”

Now, one of the fascinating things about people and celebrities – or perhaps just confirmation of The Small World Theory – is that it seems inexplicably easy to find people with personal anecdotes about any given celebrity. It can be the most fleeting thing, yet, because they are celebrities and we feel we know them – even though we don’t, of course – we draw conclusions.

A Facebook Friend says she saw McConaughey in a bar in Austin, Texas, some 15 years ago. Disapprovingly, she relates that he was behaving very, well, McBongo-like.

Another FB Friend says he literally collided with Mr. McConaughey while exiting a men’s room at a Southern California hotel.

“I was about to open the door and it swung open as he opened the door on me. In most civilized places it is customary to let people OUT of a room before you go IN.”

The gentleman further reports that Mr. McConaughey made a “huffing sound” as he brusquely moved past. I wasn’t there, of course, so I cannot divine the meaning of Mr. McConaughey’s huffing sound.

I do feel obliged to point out that these anecdotes are not really sufficient to make any judgments about Mr. McConaughey.

I should further suggest that, were we to extrapolate from my number of Facebook Friends to the total U.S. Population – assuming that 0.82 percent of them had such encounters – we’d have to conclude that more than 259,000 Americans experience these McBongo-like or huffing experiences with Mr. McConaughey, which seems unlikely.

So that takes us back to square one:

WHAT’S UP WITH MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY?

“The World Needs Bad Men, Marty”

I am as astonished as anyone at his seemingly newfound range and intensity in roles like the charismatic loner on the run in Mud, or Killer Joe’s psycho cop-hitman.

But it is HBO’s True Detective that made me a believer.

It’s the best show on television. I can scarcely make it to Sunday each week, eagerly awaiting more of damaged-goods Detective Rust Cohle, played by McConaughey. Cursed with insight, painfully self aware, Cohle sees too much. Or, rather, he understands too deeply.

His dark monologues are to die for:

“Human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware… We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, that accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody.”

Cohle is an insomniac with residual hallucinations from too much time in undercover narcotics. He has a tragic personal backstory to match, and he channels all this agony into a grim obsession to find the truth. It’s a performance heightened by his chemistry with the great Woody Harrelson as glad-handing but guilt-ridden good ol’ boy boy partner Marty Hart.

In their unmarked Crown Vic, the two detectives criss-cross the Louisiana coastal plain in search of person or persons unknown. The flatlands and marshes, shacks and abandoned churches have a post-apocalyptic look and feel that adds to the creepiness.

Some of the best scenes find McConaughey and Harrelson on the road, playing off one another like the additive synergy of two prescription drugs one doesn’t dare mix.

“You ever wonder if you’re a bad man?”
“The world needs bad men, Marty. We keep the other bad men from the door.”

It’s the show that gets everything right, especially music from T Bone Burnett, who chose the haunting “Far from Any Road” as the title song:

When the last light warms the rocks and the rattlesnakes unfold
Mountain cats will come to drag away your bones
Rise with me forever, across the silent sand
The stars will be your eyes, and the wind will be my hands

Transformation

In Dallas Buyer’s Club, McConaughey is Ron Woodroof, a Texan diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and given one month to live. This movie may mark the final transformation, in the moviegoing public’s mind, of McBongo to serious (and now, Oscar-winning) actor.

Someone called it The McConaissance. I wish I’d thought of that.

We first meet Woodroof as a hard-drinking, amateur rodeo rider. He cares about little beyond womanizing and gambling. As Woodroof moves, defiantly and anything but quietly closer to death, he transcends homophobia and selfishness, learning genuine empathy for other people along the way – people he thought were different, weak, not deserving of respect.

Just as Woodroof becomes more than he was, revealing layers of himself that he and others didn’t know existed, McConaughey shows us a depth and authenticity we didn’t even suspect. Ten minutes into Buyer’s Club I was so engrossed in Woodroof’s story that I’d forgotten I was watching an actor known for so many silly movies so very unlike this one.

It’s not just McConaughey’s film. Jared Leto’s fragile but streetwise Rayon stuck with me long after the credits rolled. I was happy Academy voters agreed.

Lemon Meringue and Miller Lite

As much as I enjoy his on-screen performances, my grasp of off-screen McConaugheyism reminds me of the frustration I felt hearing rapidly spoken la langue française after only two years of high school French.

I’d catch words and phrases here and there, then long passages of I’m-not-quite-sure-what, and then, sometimes, blissfully, an entire paragraph clear as a bell. (In fairness, my French teacher, Mrs. Goodsen, lamented my poor study habits, noting that I skated by on my accent).

Sunday night’s Best Actor acceptance speech was classic McConaughey, heading many places at once; you never knew quite where it would land. But it was heartfelt, I think, humble even.

He spoke of needing a hero to look up to. At age 15, he decided that hero would be himself in ten years. Ten years later, he decided to give it another ten years. Then another.

“My hero’s always 10 years away. I’m never going to attain that. That keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.”

He said he felt the presence of his late father, “with a big pot of gumbo, he’s got a lemon meringue pie over there, he’s probably in his underwear, and he’s got a cold can of Miller Lite, and he’s dancing right now.”

I still don’t truly understand what’s up with you, McBongo. But I’m sure down with that.

Mark Spearman, a writer who lives in Oakland, California, loves unforgettable movies and great TV. A Midwest boy, Mark is a direct descendant of bold patriots of the American Revolution, yet understated enough to pass for a native Canadian. You can follow Mark Spearman on Twitter.

106 Comments and 24 Replies

101

Ann On Saturday, March 8 at 12:23 pm

He has always been capable of great acting. Did you see him early on in ‘A Time to Kill’ & ‘Amistad’?
As far as his behavior in his personal life, he seems typical of a person with ADHD – lol!
Jokes aside, some of our great actors are hard to figure out on a personal level. Take Russell Crowe for example. In my opinion, one of the greatest actors ever. But boy, he sometimes seems like a mess off screen – a real ‘mixed bag’.
Just my opinions, but wanted to weigh in because I always figured Matthew McConauhey was underated because of his good looks and some of the film choices.

102

JennieRC On Saturday, March 8 at 3:10 pm

People are multi-faceted? Creative people allow themselves to change and explore and try on things and then maybe let them go? It’s not really important to define people and expect it to stay applicable. Life is dynamic.

103

CarolSD On Sunday, March 9 at 11:38 am

Great post. I’ve always enjoyed his movies and especially adore is performance in True Detectives. What an awseome escape every Sunday night. He’s riveting. MM is one actor I’ll watch in any movie, any time. He’s that good. And, who can resist that southern good ‘ole boy charm, ego, swagger, looks… whatever he has, he has it in spades. “Alright, alright, alright.”

104

Mary O. On Sunday, March 9 at 1:42 pm

One of my favorite new shows is True Detective and I love McGaughnheys dark philosophical musings – “Human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware… We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, that accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody.”

Diane On Monday, March 17 at 3:23 pm

Say what? We got a shot in The Garden and thanks to pride we blew it. Same thing happens today. If he really said this and really believes it, he needs to go back to the Methodist Church he grew up in, or come to think of it, maybe not THAT one, and get a little Bible larnin’. Which God was he talking about when he thanked Him at the Oscars?

105

trisha h On Sunday, March 9 at 5:47 pm

……I think he is smoking HOT…….who cant love that smile and the dimples..OMG…